Hello,
We've been experimenting with the chat system recently. The idea was to add the following features :
- global team chat, one for each language
- friend chat (aka private chat)
- many chats on the same page
- free room on the left of the board for other features.
The result is the chat you can actually see, by clicking the arrow at the bottom left of the site.
However, it appears this new chat presents several usability issues:
- it can overlap with the board on small screen/resolutions
- dealing with multiple rooms requires some practice
- the in-game chat is not prominent
- opening a new language room requires using the /join command
More generally, the new chat is not obvious to use.
What we gained in power and flexibility, we lost in simplicity.
For having taught us that, I consider this experiment a success.
Now, I will restore the previous in-game chats at the left side of the board. This may take a few days. Please be patient.
thanks
Thanks.
Discard my previus reply in another topic similar to this. Sorry. I must read all the the topics before write a reply.
so happy :´)
this is great thanks
Thank you for listening to the overwhelming feedback that we gave! I'm so relieved. You are NOT youtube after all, who forces horrible changes on people like a dictator and doesn't care about our opinion!! :)
The basic idea that you had to put it all the chats in one place does have some merit though because in theory it sounds simpler but I think this is a good example of the law of unintended consequences resulting in the opposite effect.
It could possibly work for most types of chat but you will definitely need to figure something out for the ingame chat because that is more inherently demanding. The ingame chat has to have the highest level of ease and convenience because people are in the middle of the game and want to concentrate on that and not on navigating through additional software features which will only serve to frustrate and distract. It also has to respect the fact that while you are playing the chess board is going to be front and center most prominent above all else. It *certainly* shouldn't overlap the chessboard (AS IT DOES ON MY SCREEN EVEN WHEN MINIMIZED!!).
Here is my suggestion: just have a button on the new chat interface to 'stay in place' (fixed position on bottom of browser , however you want to call it- you will need a good term that is intuitively understandable). The people who like it can leave it on(tall screens likely) and for the people that toggle off the fixed position, it will be lower down and can still be accessed by scrolling.
Hope this idea is useful, and thanks again for listening to us. Your site rocks!!
We're considering leaving it strictly for talking to friends directly and talking within teams for group conversation.
If the button for chat (on the far left) and the button for Online Friends (on the far right) was left in place, but the bar across the middle was removed, would this work for your screen's resolution?
That should be fine. It seems it would still overlap a tiny portion of the bottom left board square but that's not significant :)
http://prntscr.com/2gndqa The above image shows how much of the bottom rank is overlapped on my screen (1024x768 resolution on a lcd large screen) *with* the chat bar 'minimized'. It's very hard to see but the vertical separator on the chat bar is far over enough to just extend to the right of the bottom left corner of the board.
http://prntscr.com/2gndvk The above image is with the chessboard scrolled up a little to where it wouldn't normally be just so you can clearly see the vertical separator of the chat bar, which would I'm assuming define the boundary of the chat button.
Removing the middle part of the bar is a good idea- I kick myself for not having thought of it :)
Thank you, Thibault!
Hmmm... Have you tried using Google Chrome? It would use significantly less vertical space, making it easier to play on lichess.
Thankyou for the screen shots. :)
